Recent reviews by Talndir

The best controller ever made. The only issues are that there's no proper DPad (I do not play platformers with this, I use my 8BitDo for that) and the cheap plasticky feel that quickly accumulates grime and sweat. We've been waiting ten years for a sequel, and now it's around the corner and looking like an upgrade in every respect, so don't try getting one second hand as they're now ridiculously expensive, just wait for the reboot later this year.

Axiom verge is an incredible achievement considering it was made entirely by a single developer. However, while it has many great features, I found the overall experience to be mediocre.

First, the positives: The art design is great, although the pixel art is often unrefined - I suspect the developer was mimicing old SNES-style pixel art without fully understanding why it works. The music is also quite good, although there isn't that much of it. The game's atmosphere is excellent, and I really enjoyed the overall story idea. The game is much more Super Metroid than Hollow Knight, which is refreshing in a genre where every new metriodvania is trying to be a soulslike. The equipment/tools were really interesting, especially the address manipulator (when used on enemies), and the drone was awesome.

Unfortunately, story wasn't actually that great once you get into the details. The characters were interesting, and I wish we had more time with them. There were some interesting and deep ideas that were not properly explored, and while I understand that you're supposed to collect pages to figure out the story, too much of it was either not fleshed out or only dropped in lore-dumps at the middle and end of the game. Also I really don't like the idea that "it could have all been a dream" (it canonically wasn't, but that feeling is annoying).

The gameplay itself is not that good. There are way too many weapons, and most of them aren't any good - I used one main weapon, then a new one when I found it, then a third for the rest of the game. I found no situational use for any of the other dozen weapons past the first hour. The general combat is good, but not amazing. Boss battles are boring and easy, and every area is designed in the same way, with only slightly modified enemies. Backtracking is particularly annoying because there are no fast movement upgrades and you have to spam your address manupulator and drill everywhere to find anything. The map just felt like a chore to navigate. The idea of "glitching" enemies was really interesting, but there was so much more potential for actual proper puzzles utilising this mechanic. Also the controls are not good, especially the dash which requires you to let go and then double-tap.

Mostly, the large amount of aimless backtracking, too many unused weapons, and boring bosses and areas made the game feel like a chore after a few hours.

The game is a boss rush, but the bosses are too easy, the story is very strange and uninteresting, the main companion character is incredibly annoying, and there are pointless walking sections between each level that just wastes time (you literally press A to automatically walk to the next level and wait for two minutes while a man in a purple bunny suit says mildly plot-adjacent stuff). I beat the game in 2h44m, definitely not worth £15.

tl;dr: One of the best story-based games ever made, localised to perfection.

The Ace Attorney series is legendary for a reason, and this trilogy is where it all began. You play as the lawyer Phoenix Wright, defending clients who are usually being falsely accused of murder. Each game has four or five cases, and each case is split into alternating Investigation and Trial sections. During investigation, you investigate the crime scene, talk to witnesses, and gather evidence. In trial, you cross-examine witness, find contradictions, and expose the truth (this is where you get the famous "Objection!").

Both sections of gameplay are very fun. The investigation parts are slightly more open and less focused, and in the second two games the "Psych-Lock" mechanic pulls some of the courtroom fun into the investigations. The trial sections are where the game really shines, though. The game is essentially a puzzle/mystery game, where you are slowly uncovering the truth by breaking down testimony and presenting evidence. It requires a great deal of out-of-the-box thinking and creativity to solve the cases, although by the nature of the game it is possible to solve everything by brute force (although this will be very slow).

Most of the cases are very interesting and gripping. Out of 14 cases I would say only two are duds, most are very good, and three or four are absolutely excellent. In total you should get around 60-80 hours of gameplay (less if you skip through the text). The characters and stories are wonderfully crafted, and keep you interested and figuring things out until very near the end. The game has a lot of humour, which has been fantastically localised into English - I can honestly say I have never played a game with as good a translation as this, except perhaps the Dragon Quest games. However, within the humour are also very serious, dark, and heart-rending stories. I would say though, if you are an actual lawyer, or want to play a game that takes itself seriously, this is not the game for you - off the top of my head: cross-examining a parrot, spirit channeling, innocent until proven guilty, throwing coffee at people in court...this is not a realistic game, and if it were it would be dreadfully boring (do you have any idea how much paperwork lawyers have to do?!).

Technically, the game is fantastic. It will run on a potato (it was originally for the GameBoy Advance), has gorgeous remastered graphics, and one of the best soundtracks of any game ever. It has easy controller support despite Steam not saying so. The only thing missing is that you can't use the microphone features the DS version had, and of course you can't use the physical gestures from the Wii version, but this is hardly a loss and you can download a program that lets you shout "Objection!" and "Hold It!" if you want.

All in all, these games are amazing, and it's so wonderful to finally have them on PC, and in HD too! This game is most certainly worth full price. I would also recommend the other games in the series, especially the Investigations games, which will finally be in English for the first time ever!

*SPOILER FREE*

tl;dr: While Inscryption opened really well, the execution seriously fell off and resulted in a pretty bad ending, not to mention that most of the game's story is closed behind an ARG. If you want to play for the unique ideas and story, you may find yourself disappointed. If you just want a good deck-building game with an interesting aesthetic, then this is actually a pretty good game.

I'm gonna try to keep the main ideas and twists of Inscryption out of this review, but it's important to know that what's shown in the trailer is only act 1 of 3 - the game has some serious twists and a freaky story, it's not just all a horror-themed Slay the Spire.

Act 1 is absolutely fantastic. It's creepy, mysterious, and the roguelike card game itself is actually super well-designed and fun to play. Quite quickly you realise there are some seriously weird things going on, and while part of the game is, well, playing the card game, a large part of it is also you trying to uncover what's really going on, and trying to escape from the cabin this mysterious figure has you locked in and forced to play cards. The atmosphere, puzzles, gameplay and mystery are brilliant and super engaging.

Act 2 is a backwards step, with the truly interesting and intriguing parts of the gameplay gone. The card games continue, but in a much less gripping way, although the major twist and the way the story develops during this section keeps you interested. Ultimately though, the game fundamentally changes in a negative way.

Act 3 is a boring version of act 1. It culminates in a self-indulgent, overly long, disappointing ending. The last three hours were a real slog.

I do have to mention that once the game is beaten, a new mode unlocks that essentially turns the card game portion of act 1 into a normal roguelike deck-building game, which is good as it means the "core" game is actually replayable, and it's by far the best part of the game. So if your focus is on that, this may be worth it to you.

Unfortunately, the real heart of the game is the mystery, and the fact that while you're playing this card game, you're also trying to figure out this mystery, solve puzzles, and perhaps escape from the game entirely. This was done brilliantly at first, but was entirely abandoned after act 1! The only thing keeping it interesting after act 1 was the story, but the vast majority of the story is gated behind an ARG. For those of you who don't know, ARGs typically involve finding hidden clues within a game (even hidden in the game's files) and solving puzzles there to find the "true" story. Personally, I don't find ARGs entertaining, I don't have the knowledge to help solve them, and they only really work when done as a large community as soon as the game is released. To hide the majority of the lore (which turns out to be really wacky, in a bad way) behind this ARG, especially when it's really the driver of the game post act 1, is a real disappointment to me.

Ultimately, I knew nothing about this game when I bought it except that it was well-recommended and unique; I loved the first act, but was thoroughly disappointed by the rest, especially the ending. The gripping story and ideas were the core of the game but were either abandoned early on or hidden behind an ARG, leaving a bad taste in my mouth once the credits had rolled.

tl;dr: Good but not as amazing as everyone makes it out to be. As a FromSoft fan, it's slightly disappointing, but worth playing. Performance is great.

When Elden Ring came out, people went mad for it, even non Souls fans, and it won game of the year. I bought it, played it for around 30 hours, and got bored. This summer I did a completely new playthrough, and while it's good, it's completely overrated.

Firstly, the good: Performance is brilliant. I have a very beefy PC but it doesn't seem to guzzle resources too much. I only had a few moments of lag (during some cutscenes of all things!) and one crash. Compared to Hogwarts Legacy which I recently finished, it was leagues better performance-wise.

The world design is also great. Again, comparing to Hogwarts Legacy where you can never tell where you are, every location is visually distinct and you can easily navigate around the world without using the map, hence why there is no minimap. I like the mechanic of finding the map markers in each area, although some you find a bit too late for my tastes. I like how there's a lot of stuff in the world, but it doesn't feel overfilled. It's also visually beautiful.

Enemy design is good and varied. Each area is unique and interesting. In particular, the starting area of Limgrave is extremely polished and feels incredibly fun, and is a perfect first area. If you embrace the open world (something I failed to do in my first attempted playthrough) you realise you can just go somewhere else and come back later when you're stronger. The world is curated - it's not Skyrim, there's no level scaling or radiant quests.

There's a massive amount of weapons and spells, and a lot of characters to meet with their own questlines. I was particularly interested in Ranni's and Millicent's questlines.

Now for the bad: Firstly, the exploration gets boring after a while. The world is slightly too big, especially once you add the underground (although I did generally like the underground as an idea). There are too many copy-pasted ruins with very similar structures and many dungeons even have identical or re-skinned bosses! This is okay for a game like Skyrim where things are more story- and quest-guided, but here it starts to feel boring after a while. Eventually I just wanted it to end.

Also, some areas are very underdeveloped. Limgrave is fantastic, as is Liurnia of the Lakes. Caelid...I hate it, but it's not badly designed. However, the Altus Plateau, Consecrated Snowfield, and Mountaintop of the Giants suck. You have to do them back-to-back, and by the time I got to the Haligtree, I just ran through as fast as I could...which is a real shame, because it's the most interesting area in the game! It's just behind such slogs that I wanted to go straight to the boss and be done with it. Crumbling Farum Azula (what a name...) is the most pointless place ever, you have no idea how you got there or why you have to go through it, again it's just a slog.

It also feels to me like you really need to pick your build carefully. There's a massive difficulty spike after Leyndell, which is sudden and very annoying. I was playing a mage which meant I had no health, so suddenly I went from "I can fight this if I'm smart" to "everything one-hit kills me". I had to overly rely on spirit ashes, which are like upgradeable summons, just to survive...but then if you over-upgrade them they can become semi-OP. Except I kinda have to use them because I can't fight otherwise. It's quite frustrating.

Some bosses are quite lazy and boring, and as I said, some are just reskins. I feel like the game forces you to have a more tanky and dextrous playstyle towards the latter half of the game, which it didn't at the beginning, punishing certain builds in a way the previous souls games didn't. Like in DS1 and DS2 you could do any build, and in DS3 it forced you *from the beginning* to play in a very roll-heavy style (it literally mocks shields in item descriptions). Elden Ring feels like it gives you complete choice, but that choice can really bite you late in the game. You can respec, but then you're taking away my build choices.

The story is halfway between Dark Souls (obtuse and hidden) and Sekiro (obvious and in-your-face). This is exactly the *wrong* spot, especially for a very long game. With Sekiro, I had a clear character and objective. With Dark Souls, I had incredible vagueness and a history to gradually explore, if I could be bothered. With Elden Ring, I feel half in and half out of the story at all times. I would've much preferred if they'd added many more characters, and made the story much more explicit. Things like the stars and the Golden Order are important but never used fully, despite being very current things. I was about to say you never go to where the fallen ruins come from, which are teased from minute one, but just realised that's Farum Azula...wow that's disappointing to finally notice. And the worst thing? Melina is supposed to be your best buddy. Well you talk to her like five times in the whole game. So when that choice comes, someone explain to me why I should care about her at all? Not to mention that she was the perfect way to build interest in the world and story, but was completely wasted. Emerald Herald still #1.

Finally, the final boss sucks. There are three back-to-back bosses at the end. The first is fine, and surprising in an interesting way. The second is good, and I thought it'd be the final boss. The final boss is some guy I don't even know the identity of, and then the actual final thing right after is some weird creature that has never been mentioned until this point. It's also just annoying to fight. Genuinely such a disappointing ending. Malenia was the best boss by far, because she was a great fight and her importance and power was teased at from very early on and throughout Caelid. But instead of her we got...Elden Beast. Yay.

Oh, and finally, the Great Runes suck and wear off on death, requiring consumables whose only reliable source is from multiplayer. And before someone says, "Just like humanity/embers!", they're completely different. These rewards are parts of the giant divine thing you're aiming towards, yet I reckon the vast majority of players never used them. Like, increase max HP and FP by 15%? Is that what the Elden Ring is made of, these paltry things? There are many ways this could have been used SO MUCH BETTER. And finally, you only need two to be directed to Leyndell! The Roundtable Hold guys absolutely suck!

In short, good game, became a slogfest at the end, too much story to not care but not enough to care, might (MIGHT) replay again in the future but unlikely.

Oh and, dog ahead :)

EDIT 28/07/2024: The latest patch has fixed all performance issues - no crashes, loading screens are ten seconds maximum, no need to delete shader cache or verify game files before launching. Therefore I'm changing the review to positive.

I'm afraid I can't recommend this game for one reason only, and it's performance.

The game is very fun and has a large world to explore. Unfortunately, it feels like it slightly misses the mark on everything - the main story is slightly less compelling that I expected, the world feels slightly too similar, Hogwarts is slightly too confusing to navigate, puzzles are slightly too easy, combat is fun but too repetitive...it's not quite there in every regard. Still, I had fun and it's a great game for people who like collecting everything.

However, there are three performance issues. The first is that it guzzles RAM like nobody's business; you need a high-end PC and graphics card, even without max settings. I have a 3080 and couldn't turn on raytracing. Secondly, it crashes. It was crashing a lot for me, lately it's hardly crashed, but the risk is always there. Luckily it autosaves constantly so you hardly lose progress. It also always crashes on startup unless I delete the cached shaders AND verify game files...which takes several minutes. Thirdly, loading screens take forever. This is the worst offender - fast travelling takes around 30 seconds, sometimes longer, and as an open-world game you have to do this constantly. Not being able to fast travel without risking a crash or taking over 30 seconds staring at laggy boring loading screens seriously decreased my enjoyment.

In the end I'm just in it for the achievements, and while I had fun it was marred by technical difficulties that really shouldn't have been there.

Like QWOP on steroids with calming Australian commentary.

Just not fun.

For a start, the entire game is a rip-off of the bomb mechanic in Fez, except that you can't rotate until everything has settled. There's an easy bug where you can click and rotate at the same time, which partly breaks the physics. The music abruptly starts and stops, and you can't rebind the arrow keys to A/D. There seems to be no indication of how stars are awarded - is it time? Number of rotations? Number of bombs detonated? Number of clicks?

The worst offender however is the level design. Many of the levels are "click and see what happens until you beat the level". It's not that they're hard to figure out, it's that the janky physics and total lack of structure of the levels means that you don't feel like finding out and it's often easier to just randomly do stuff until you win. Level 39 in particular shows how random the physics are - you click the same box and each time the block goes flying in a slightly different direction with slightly different velocity...which is pretty bad considering that you need the perfect angle and velocity to beat the level.

I just can't recommend anyone play this game as it will make you frustrated and annoyed, and there is not a single moment of "aha, I got it!"

Lucid9 is an underrated original English visual novel (OEVN) which appeals brilliantly to both new and seasoned visual novel players. Its characters, story and music are all top notch, and for the very low price of £0.00 you should really give it a go.

This review will not contain spoilers - as a result, some truths may be slightly bent to inform you without giving too much away.

TL;DR:
Story: 10/10
Characters: 9/10
Visuals: 9/10
Music & Sound: 10/10
Verdict: It's free and only 15 hours long, go play it already!


In Lucid9 you play Yama, a high school student enrolled in a private Japanese academy for wealthy kids. At the beginning of the new school year, students start to go missing. Meanwhile a freelance detective approaches you in the hope of solving what the police cannot - how and why these disappearances are taking place.

The game is around 15 hours long, and mainly focuses on the mystery at hand while also fleshing out each character (especially Yama and his past). The story is executed very well, building suspense while keeping the identity of the perpetrator hidden until the very end, but there are definitely enough clues to figure it out yourself if you pay attention. Yama's shaky past and his psycholigical problems that arise from it make the story much more interesting later on. There is also a fair amount of time spent on the daily life of Yama and his friends, but no scene is superflous - they all help build the character of the main cast and their relationship to Yama and each other.

There is one good ending, with many bad endings depending on your choices in the final stages of the game. Although you can gain favour with four characters, Lucid9 isn't a dating sim - Rui is always the 'main girl' of the story and the other characters acknowledge this very early on. This helps focus the spotlight on her, which I think works in the game's favour. The deduction sequences are also fun and don't feel forced at all. Overall the story and how it was presented was fantastic.


Despite there being loads of characters to cram into a very short story, Lucid9 pulls it off perfectly. Firstly, Yama's character is not that of a generic protagonist - he can be lazy and harsh but this makes his character much more interesting. His development is timed well and progresses steadily throughout. His psychological problems and his past are relevant and didn't feel like a gimmick to liven up the story. The other four non-romance characters - Masato, Yukari, Ryouta and Shigure - are also developed, albeit much less. I found Yukari's development to be one of the most interesting in any story, and each character definitely has their own unique charm and story (even if they can sometimes be a bit annoying).

The four girls are also very unique, and you will definitely be enjoying the scenes with at least one of them. I especially liked the developing relationships with Airi and Elizabeth - they felt natural and well written. Akira's scenes are full of energy, Misaki's are sensible and relaxing, Lizzie's are sharp-witted and funny, and Airi's are very calming. Each character's theme was also very well crafted. Finally, Rui's character didn't have that much development and was pretty generic, but she did not bring the rest down at all. I personally found Rui and Misaki to have the weakest characterisation and development - hopefully this is remedied in the upcoming sequel, which should have separate routes per character.

Side note: As someone who has participated in several student drama groups before, I was very happy to see how accurate they made the drama club at the academy! I really got into the two scenes set there and Akira, while slightly over the top, was someone whose escapism I could somewhat relate to.


The visuals in this game are amazing. There was clearly a lot of effort put into the character sprites, backgrounds and CGs. The style is distinct, but not enough to be jarring. The happy scenes were bright and cheerful and the violent scenes were gory in all their glory. There was a perfect mix of light and heavy - they definitely didn't keep it PG when it came to the violence. However, I felt that in a few CGs the faces were strangely proportioned and some backgrounds seemed to be intentionally blurred.

Note also that there is no sexual content, although due to the graphic nature of some scenes and some disturbing scenes and themes I would recommend not giving this game to someone under 12 years old (also, the deduction sequences would go right over their head).


The music in this game is absolutely exceptional. The generic happy/sad/emotional/mystery themes were great, but what really stood out for me was the character themes. Each character's theme is perfectly suited from them, from Airi's music box and Elizabeth's piano to Shigure's mysterious theme with sirens in the background and Akira's upbeat and energetic melody. The other two outstanding tracks were the title theme, and one other theme called 'Depths' that plays during certain scenes. Depths in particular is a real emotion inducer in context, and it works amazingly.

Lucid9 has no voice acting, although an English voice pack is in the works. Also, the soundtrack can be downloaded for free from Steam (it will appear as a .zip in the game directory).

Highlights of the OST:
Urban Disturbance (Title theme)
Hustle & Bustle (Rui's theme)
Empty Eyes (Airi's theme)
Adult Talk
Depths


As Lucid9 is a visual novel, any old potato can run it. You should have no problems no matter what you're running it on. I myself played it on a laptop with integrated graphics and it was perfectly smooth.


If you're still reading, then scroll to the stop of this page and download the game already! It's free, short and has so much effort and love put into it. Also look out for the sequel and voice pack!